The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Robert Shea (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

him was soft, kindly. "Why must?"

"Because of who I am," Simon said in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Simon?"

Can I tell him, Simon wondered. Ever since, seven years ago, his mother and Roland had told him the secret of his birth, questions of who he really was, questions of right and wrong, had assailed him, and there had been no one to ask. He loved his mother and he admired Roland, but they were too close to it all. But to tell anyone else would bring calamity down on all three of them.

There had been times during the years Simon had lived with King Louis that the king had seemed ready to listen. But Simon had also known that King Louis believed in doing right no matter whom it hurt.

Friar Mathieu, though, seemed to have more of a sense that life[201] was not a matter of simple rights and wrongs. He could see the Tartars for the ferocious creatures they were, and yet feel kindly toward them. His wisdom and worldly experience could help Simon sort things out.

Then, too, there was a way to bind Friar Mathieu never to speak of this to anyone.

But when Simon tried to speak, his chest and throat were constricted by fear, and his voice came out in a croak. He felt as if he were under a spell to prevent him from uttering his family secrets.

"Father, may I confide in you under the seal of confession?"

The old Franciscan tugged on the reins of his donkey, so that they fell farther behind the rest of the party. Simon slowed his palfrey to fall back beside Mathieu.

"Is it truly a matter for confession, or just a secret?"

Simon's hands were so cold he pressed them against his palfrey's neck to warm them. How could he tell everything to this priest he had known only a few months? Perhaps he should just apologize and say no more.

But he thought a little longer and said, "It is a question of right and wrong. And if I am doing wrong, I am committing a terribly grave sin."

Friar Mathieu looked around him. "Very well, then, what you tell me is under the seal of the sacrament of confession, and I may repeat it to no man, under penalty of eternal damnation. Make the sign of the cross and begin."

Simon touched his fingertips to forehead, chest, and shoulders. For a moment he hesitated, his mouth dry and his heart hammering. He had promised his mother and Roland never to tell anyone about this.

But I must! I cannot have it festering inside me for the rest of my life.

What, though, if Friar Mathieu disappointed him? What if he had nothing useful, or even comforting to say on learning Simon's secret? Well, there was a way to test him.

The secret was really twofold. One part of it was terrible enough, but already known to the king and queen and many knights who had been on the last crusade. Simon could tell Friar Mathieu the lesser secret safely enough, then weigh his response and decide whether to tell him what was known to only three people in the world.

"I said I must make this mission succeed because of who I am. What have you heard about the last Count de Gobignon?"[202]

By now the moon had risen high, and Simon could see the old Franciscan's face quite clearly. Friar Mathieu frowned and stroked his long white beard.

"Very little, I am afraid. He was a very great landowner, one of the five Peers of the Realm, as you are now, and he was zealous in putting down the Cathar heretics in Languedoc." He cast a pained look at Simon. "I spent the years when your father was prominent wandering the roads as a beggar, then studying for the priesthood, and I am afraid I paid very little attention to what was happening in the world."

Friar Mathieu's reply brought a sad smile to Simon's lips.

"That you, like most people, know so little of Amalric de Gobignon I owe to the generosity of King Louis and those close to him. The man whose name I inherited was a murderer, an archtraitor, a Judas. But when King Louis came back from that failed crusade in Egypt, he decreed that Count Amalric's deeds not be made known."

"I well remember my horror when I heard that the king was captured and his army destroyed," said Friar Mathieu. "I fell on my knees in the road, weeping, and prayed for him and the queen and the other captives. What joy when we learned they were ransomed and would be coming back to us."

"It was Count Amalric's treachery that caused the calamity." It seemed to Simon that Nicolette, his mother, and her husband, Roland, had told him the story hundreds of times. They wanted him to know it by heart.

"He believed that the Cathars had murdered his father, Count Stephen de Gobignon, my grandfather," Simon went on. "King Louis advocated mercy toward heretics. Count Amalric had a brother, Hugues, a Dominican inquisitor, who was killed before his very eyes by an assassin's arrow in Béziers while he was presiding over the burning of Cathars."

"Ah, those heresy-hunting Dominicans." Friar Mathieu shook his head.

"When Hugues was killed, Count Amalric blamed the king's leniency toward heretics. After that, it seems, a madness possessed the count. He came to believe he could overthrow the king and take his throne."

"He must have been mad," said Friar Mathieu. "Never has a King of France been so loved as this Louis."

"Count Amalric went on crusade with King Louis, taking my[203] mother, Countess Nicolette, along with him, even as King Louis took Queen Marguerite. I was a very young child then. They left me in the keeping of my mother's sisters. The crusaders captured Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile, left the noncombatants there and marched southward toward Cairo."

Simon hesitated, feeling himself choke up again. These were the crimes of the man everyone believed was his father. It was agony to give voice to them.

But he plunged on. "At a city called Mansura, Count Amalric led part of his own army into a trap, and most were killed. He tricked the rest of the army, including the king, into surrendering to the Mamelukes. He alone escaped. He went to Damietta, supposedly to take charge of the defense. He made a secret promise to the Sultan of Cairo to deliver Damietta, together with the ransom money, if the sultan would slay the king and all the other captive crusaders."

Friar Mathieu gasped. "Why in God's name would a French nobleman do such dreadful things?"

"With the king and his brothers dead, he would be the most powerful man in France," said Simon. "He might have succeeded, but for two things. First, the Mameluke emirs, led by the same Baibars who now rules Egypt, rose in revolt and killed the sultan with whom Count Amalric was bargaining. Baibars and the Mamelukes preferred to deal honorably with their prisoners."

"Ah, yes, Baibars," Friar Mathieu nodded. "The Tartars hate him and all of Outremer fears him."

"And then a knight-troubadour captured along with the king, one who had an old grudge against the Count de Gobignon, offered to go to Damietta and meet the count in single combat. After a fierce combat he slew Count Amalric. The king and the surviving crusaders were saved and they ransomed themselves. The troubadour's name was Roland de Vency."

"I never heard of him," said Friar Mathieu.

"No, just as you never heard of Count Amalric's treason. The king wanted the whole episode buried in an unmarked grave along with the count."

There was silence between them for a moment. Simon listened to the cart wheels creak and looked up at the moon painting the Umbrian hillsides silver. Soon they would round a bend and see the lights of Orvieto.

Simon, torn by anguish, wondered what Friar Mathieu thought[204] of him. Did he despise him, as so many great nobles did? He remembered that Friar Mathieu had once been a knight himself. How could he not hate a man with Amalric de Gobignon's blood in him? His muscles knotted as he waited to hear what Friar Mathieu would say.

He looked at the old Franciscan and saw sadness in his watery eyes.

"But what happened does not lie buried, much as the king and you would wish it to."

Simon felt tears sting his eyes and a lump grow in his throat. He remembered the sneers, the slights, the whispers he had endured. Such heartbreaking moments were among his earliest memories.

He shook his head miserably. "No. What happened has never been forgotten."

"You are ashamed of the name you bear." The kindness in Friar Mathieu's voice evoked a warm feeling in Simon's breast.

I was not mistaken in him.

"You are—how old—twenty?"

Simon nodded.

"At your age most men, especially those like you with vast estates and great responsibilities, are married or at least plighted."

Pain poured out with Simon's words. "I have been rebuffed twice. The name of de Gobignon is irrevocably tainted."

Friar Mathieu rubbed the back of his donkey's neck thoughtfully. "Evidently the king does not think so, or he would not have honored you with so important a task."

"He did everything possible to help me. When my mother and my grandmother fought over who should have the rearing of me, the king settled it by making himself my guardian and taking me to live in the palace. Then his brother, Count Charles d'Anjou, took me for a time as his equerry."

"Why did your mother and grandmother fight over you?"

The hollow of dread in Simon's middle grew huge. Now they were coming to the deepest secret of all.

"My mother married the troubadour, Roland de Vency. My grandmother, Count Amalric's mother, could never accept as a father to me the man who slew her son."

He felt dizzy with pain, remembering his grandmother's screams of rage, his mother's weeping, Roland facing the sword points of a dozen men-at-arms, long, mysterious journeys, hours of doing nothing[205] in empty rooms while, somewhere nearby, people argued over his fate. God, it had been horrible!

Friar Mathieu reached out from the back of his donkey and laid a comforting hand on Simon's arm. "Ah, I understand you better now. Carrying this family shame, fought over in childhood, no real parents to live with. And the burden of all that wealth and power."

Simon laughed bitterly. "Burden! Few men would think wealth and power a burden."

Friar Mathieu chuckled. "No, of course not. But you know better, do you not? You have already realized that you must work constantly to use rightly what you have, or it will destroy you as it destroyed your father."

Yes, but ...

Simon thought of the endless fields and forests of the Gobignon domain in the north, what pleasure it was to ride through them on the hunt. How the unquestioning respect of vassals and serfs eased his doubts of himself. He thought of the complaisant village and peasant girls who happily helped him forget that no woman of noble blood would marry him. He reminded himself that only three or four men in all the world were in a position to tell him what to do. No, if only the name he bore were free of the accursed stain of treachery, he would be perfectly happy to be the Count de Gobignon.

Friar Mathieu broke in on his thoughts. "You feel you must do something grand and noble to make up for your father's wickedness. Listen: A man can live only his own life. The name de Gobignon, what is it? A puff of air. A scribble on a sheet of parchment. You are not your name. You are not Simon de Gobignon."

Simon's blood turned to ice. Does he know?

But then he realized Friar Mathieu was speaking only figuratively.

"But men of great families scorn me because I bear the name de Gobignon," he said. "I will have to live out my life in disgrace."

"God respects you," said Friar Mathieu quietly and intensely. "Weighed against that, the opinion of men is nothing."

That is true, Simon thought, and great chains that had weighed him down as long as he could remember suddenly fell away. He felt himself gasping for breath.

Friar Mathieu continued. "The beauty of my vows is that with their help I have come to know who I truly am. I have given up my name, my possessions, the love of women, my worldly position.[206] You need not give up all those things. But if you can part with them in your mind, you can come to know yourself as God knows you. You can see that you are not what people think of you."

Tears of joy burned Simon's eyelids. Thank you, God, for allowing me to meet this man.

"Yes," Simon whispered. "Yes, I understand."

"But," said Friar Mathieu, a note of light reproof in his